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The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene ( ISBN 0,192,860,925 ) is a book from 1976 by the British biologist Richard Dawkins . Contents * 1 History * 2 Contents * 3 Summary History Dawkins was originally inspired by an article by William Donald Hamilton in 1966, but dropped out and spent two years in the United States where he joined the anti-Vietnam War movement , until he returned to Britain in 1970. As Dawkins initially focused on computer work, but by constant strikes and blackouts which was paused, and when he finally decided to write (on a typewriter ) about the ideas about the importance of genes in natural selection that he had always kept busy in those years; early 70s emerged as the first two chapters of what would become The Selfish Gene. When the electricity was restored, Dawkins left the project are temporary, until other biologists like John Maynard Smith and Robert Trivers in 1971-'74 also started publishing articles about altruism and genes, which were read by Dawkins and encourage him to continue writing . In 1975 the manuscript was completed, and finally The Selfish Gene was published in 1976 by Oxford University Press, with an introduction by the author and a foreword by Trivers. A second edition was published in 1989, with two additional chapters and many new footnotes to express new ideas and discoveries and a new preface by the author, without the preface of Trivers. The book was re-released in 2006 with an extensive new introduction by the author, with the old two introductions and the original foreword by Trivers.The English version of the book are more than one million copies. A Dutch translation, by Henny Scheepmaker, appeared in 1977 at AW Bruna Publishers under the title The selfish inheritance. The following pressures ended up with Contact publishers like''The Selfish Gene: about evolution, aggression and self-interest'' (1986); Pandora brought in 1995 under the title Our selfish genes; reissue Olympus nonfiction in 2006 had a modified subtitle:The Selfish Gene: about evolution, self-interest and altruism. Contents In the book by Dawkins discusses the impact that the theory of evolution has had on our vision of one of the most important aspects of human social life: the biology of selfishness andaltruism . He eventually concluded that it is in the evolution to the welfare of the individual (or actually even the gene ), and not like it was previously assumed, for the good of the species . A gene is only successful if it is increasing in number with respect to its alleles in the population. Everything depends solely on them. Reasonable beings, we would call it selfish, hence the title of the book. This word is applied to genes, a technical term: Dawkins obviously has to genes not emotions, wants, or other characteristics to. By choosing the gene as the most basic unit to which selection takes place, and to consider the individual as only a carrier ("vehicle") of genes, can also be included wherein, in the situations in nature altruistic behavior of individuals is seen, such as the honey bee sacrifice for the colony. This problem to understand from the point of view of the individual is possible, (and, for example, was done by WD Hamilton , one of the biologists that inspired Dawkins to his vision), but to be at the center by the gene is all easier to clear, as it is easier to to visualize the solar system and planets revolve around the sun than with all kinds of complicated jobs that need to be constructed if one chooses the earth as the center. The idea of the gene as a central element which is selected was further elaborated by Dawkins in which he sees himself as his main work, "The Extended Phenotype." Going out of the group or even the species, ie the whole set of individuals of a species as the unit on which is selected, results in immediate contradictions and is demonstrably wrong. Yet this misconception still propagated in many textbooks and popular TV programs and even the Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz made himself sometimes guilty. source? Summary Dawkins does not want to psychologizing about agreeableness or actually is dictated by self-seeking (and perhaps also the other way round), but attempts on the basis of the biology at the level of the gene to explain the development of these properties in organisms. He also shows that the natural selection, such as the evolution theory of Charles Darwin , not about the kind of well-being (or group), but that ultimately the gene that means "survival machines," all organisms , its properties passes. It is moreover not preclude cooperation with other genes, but even usually a prerequisite. A gene contains only a small part of the overall design plan for a complex organism; coat color is in another gene, the structure of the bones back into another, just to name a few. Genes are the "building blocks", containing the draft or parts of the draft, of an organism and that is all that is passed from generation to generation. The gene, which is best "survival machine" builds, survives. Thus, given its genes in competition with other genes that perform the same functions in a different way ( alleles ). This meant Dawkins's selfish gene. Those genes that can build the best survival device, will live long enough to pass on their characteristics to subsequent generations. The word 'gene' is interpreted broadly in the book, not as a piece of DNA that encodes one particular protein, but in a much broader sense, as' genetic information that leads to a particular characteristic or behavior, if necessary through numerous intermediate steps. Although genes can be regarded as selfish, it does not mean that the organism (the survival device) that can be built on the basis of many genes acting together, is necessarily selfish. This gives Dawkins' reasoning also room for the existence of altruism, as in several animal species and can be observed in humans. An example is the monkey colony warns that a predator is nearby and thus draws the attention of the rover itself. It is not difficult to see that this colony has the best chance of survival and the genes which the properties of the survival equipment, or the members of the monkey colony, founded will survive and their properties will pass, including the gene encoding the ability to contain warn. From this it can be deduced that for a monkey is only relevant to exhibit such behavior as the genes that behavior also lead to occur in the group, in other words, when it comes to close relatives. For an unrelated group, the selection pressure (the warning monkey has more chance of being caught) against such 'altruistic' behavior works. Altruism occurs only with groups with a (very) close genetic relationship: even bees in a hive are all at least 50% genetically identical to each other. Category:Genetics Category:Scientific book Category:Work of Richard Dawkins